Glenda Byars: Learning how to be thankful

Published: Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 6:44 p.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 6:45 p.m.

‘Well, th’ lawww!” Mama Goodson meets us at the back door of her four-room mill village house.

“Are you freezin’ to death? Come in and git warm!”

The back hall leads into the kitchen and the aromas that mingle are tantalizing and embracing: sage and onions and celery in the dressing; cinnamon slipping in from the apple cake and pumpkin pies (most of us prefer sweet potato pie, but we always have pumpkin, too); coffee warming on the back of the stove.

Just beyond the kitchen, the voices of Papa, Aunt Grace, Uncle G.B and Aunt Jewel, Uncle Leonard and Aunt Clarice jangle in a raucous holiday cacophony.

Everyone gets a great big “UH-UHH” hug, that squeezes the breath out.

By the time we get around the room, someone else has come in and the hugging continues.

When its time to eat Thanksgiving dinner (not lunch, and supper is leftovers), Mama always asks God to “bless the food we are about to partake” and offers thanks to her Jesus for the family here and those who were far away. I learned more than table manners at those dinners that enticed with food and taught by example.

RoseMary Jones Hyatt’s loving, care-giving Pennsylvania-Dutch “Granny” Stovall frequently fed the whole Stovall, Epperson, Jones and Brown clan that spilled out on the front porch after the blessing and plate-loading.

“We were loved, even though,” Jim Epperson remembers, “we had to be quiet until Granddaddy listened to ‘The Lone Ranger’ on the radio!”

RoseMary muses, “Times were simpler. Nobody had much ‘stuff,’ but we knew who we were and didn’t even want to live by the standards set by anyone else.”

Our generation is blessed, and we know it.

I wish that President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney could have one of our Thanksgiving dinners. Could sit between RoseMary’s Daddy and her Grandmother in front of the Thanksgiving turkey. Or get one of Mama Goodson’s hugs. Could know what its like to look out the bedroom window every spring and see the “snowball bushes” Papa planted when we bought our house; or how pecan pie tastes when it’s made by slightly gnarled fingers, from a recipe handed down since Great-Granddaddy Akins planted the pecan trees in the backyard.

Neither candidate was “in touch with the American people”; neither seemed to have learned lessons about honesty, gratitude, patriotism, religion, respect and, most of all, family.

Isn’t it sad that they and so many others missed our Southern Thanksgivings? Our laughter that rocked the house; our cousins and siblings and family lore? Uncle Frank snoring softly on the couch after dinner; Mother and Aunt Jean clearing away the dishes; the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade marching across the little television screen, leaving precious memories across our hearts.